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National Ocean Sciences Bowl - Trout Bowl

CIRES Education and Outreach is proud to host the only land-locked regional competition in the country. Competing teams have come from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, New Mexico and Kansas. Every spring, the winning team travels to the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB) finals competition.

WHEN: 2019 Trout Bowl Date - Saturday, February 2nd, 2019

WHERE: The Trout Bowl is held at the University of Colorado Memorial Center.

The Trout Bowl is the only regional NOSB competition in a completely land-locked state, and receives teams from one of the largest geographic area - including Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, New Mexico and Kansas.

This quiz-show style competition is more diverse than most competitions, engaging schools which do not usually compete and engaging more girls than most science competitions. This is due to the extent to which we recruit. The National Ocean Sciences Bowl is supported by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and is hosted by CIRES Education Outreach.

Every year, in February or March, twelve schools competing in teams of five travel to the University of Colorado Boulder and participate in the Trout Bowl regional competition. The winning then gets the opportunity to compete at the national competition in April.

All competing students receive a small goodie bag and certificate of participation, while the top three placing teams receive plaques or trophies and prize bags. The goodie and prize bags are filled with donations from our generous Sponsors.

The Trout Bowl could not happen without the continual support of our volunteers, who donate their time every year to run a successful competition. We recruit 75-100 volunteers annually to perform a range of roles.

The Trout Bowl regional competition supports the goals of CU and CIRES.

The Trout Bowl competition is one of the 25 regional competitions for the National Ocean Sciences Bowl.

Typically held in February or March, the Trout Bowl tests 12 teams of 4-5 students on their knowledge of scientific and technical disciplines through quick answer buzzer questions and more complex, critical thinking team challenge questions (TCQs).

The winning team from each of the 25 regional competitions is provided transportation and room and board accommodation to advance to the NOSB Finals Competition held in a different location each year in April.

The deadline to register a team: December 3rd, and can be done online here.

The Ocean Sciences Bowl is an exciting, high-energy "quiz bowl" competition for high school students. Every year, we rely on our wonderful crew of volunteers to make the event possible! We need the largest number of volunteers for the morning round-robin competition, but those who can stay all day get to work during the dynamic double-elimination final rounds in the afternoon. All volunteers are welcome to join us for a complimentary buffet lunch.

Volunteer check-in will be at 8:00am. Lunch will be around 1:00pm. We will not be supplying breakfast, but we will have coffee and snacks in Ocean Bowl Central.

No ocean science experience is necessary to volunteer for this fun event! We have several different volunteer tasks you may choose from, including scorekeeping, timekeeping, moderating, and rules/science judging. We also need help with registration and running messages to the competition rooms. There will be training sessions in late January and early February for all volunteer roles.

Please contact Amanda if you have any questions or would like to volunteer for the Trout Bowl, or sign-up online.

We would like to thank our generous sponsors for their support!

The goodie bags provided to all participating Trout Bowl students as well as the prize bags given to our top-three placing teams are filled with donations from our many sponsors.